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Short notice I know, but Michael Taft, among others, taking part in the Sheehy-Skeffington School on Human Rights this Saturday in Liberty Hall. Free, but a contribution towards lunch requested. Full details here

“The fiscal compact, the most unbalanced and asymmetric treaty member states have ever signed, is the best illustration of the new Europe: while austerity is strictly enforced, growth is barely promised. In the good old EU, member states were equal and treaties represented a compromise between competing visions of Europe. Now, Europe is about asymmetries in power and fear for the future. Europe now resembles Thomas Hobbes’ description of man’s life in its natural state: “poor, nasty, brutish and short.” Two years on, not a single growth measure has been adopted. Time to say: basta!”http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/dbea8c5c-8e34-11e1-b9ae-00144feab49a.html#axzz1t0uL2kHN

The comedian John Colleary, who by the way of being an acquaintance of mine, upon spotting that John Giles and the late James Brown were physically not that dissimilar, has been known to do a brilliant impression of JG performing Sex Machine.

ULA National Conference is this Saturday. For some reason no one produced a graphic for it. Here’s the lineup anyway.

Agenda for ULA conference

10am-10.30am
Registration

10.30 am- 13.00 The crisis and resistance to austerity
Five min contributions from the speakers below followed by open discussion
a) Cllr Brid Smith on the crisis
b) John Halligan TD
c) Speakers invited from Vita Cortex / Irish Cement strikes
d) Speaker from the Campaign Against the Household and Water Taxes
e) Paul Murphy MEP on the Austerity Treaty
f) Thomas Pringle TD (to be confirmed)

13.00-14.00pm
Lunch break and meeting of non-aligned members to elect representatives to the Steering Committee

14.00-16.00
Building the ULA, including the report on the Sub-committee on structures: Reps of PBPA, Sligo Socialist Group, WUAG and SP and non aligned ULA member followed by open discussion

If you’re a ULA activist not aligned to one of the founding components (SP, PBP, TWUAG), you can get in touch with your fellow non-aligned at “weareragbags@gmail.com”. We’re all very isolated but in the interest of giving the ULA an internal life, we’re starting to get to know each other and from there; do what we can to push the project on.

In further “shitbags” news, the government has had to take down a bunch of videos which called for a Yes vote from their allegedly “unbiased” (just look at the fucking web address) stabilitytreaty.ie website. The website is part of our elite’s ongoing attempt to circumvent the McKenna judgment, which stops the state from spending our money convincing us to vote the way they like in constitutional referendums.

Say what you like about Patricia McKenna, and plenty of people have been known to moan about her, she has two major achievements to her name, which is two more than most Irish politicians will ever manage. (1) Her dogged, principled, opposition to the Green Party’s entry into coalition, maintained when that stance was neither popular nor profitable as well as later on when she was proven entirely correct. (2) That legal case. Like Crotty before her, she has caused great discomfort to many of the people it’s most important to cause great discomfort to.

Of course, the judgment has never stopped the state from pouring money into “institutes” and “think tanks” and other bodies devoted to propagandising for the EU. The Referendum Commission is itself a wheeze devoted to limiting the effects of the judgment.

Anyway,Paul Murphy, Socialist Party MEP, raised the issue of the speeches on the government “information” website, and that was swiftly followed by a minor purge of said website. Sinn Fein are threatening to take legal action over the whole “information” campaign.

“The world’s biggest banks are working with one another and police to gather intelligence as protesters try to rejuvenate the Occupy Wall Street movement with May demonstrations, industry security consultants said….
the movement against income inequality and corporate abuse will regain strength, said Brian McNary, director of global risk at Pinkerton Consulting & Investigations, a subsidiary of Sweden’s Securitas AB. (SECUB) He works with international financial firms to “identify, map and track” protesters across social media and at their assemblies, he said. The companies gather data “carefully and methodically” to prevent business disruptions. ” No doubt the Pinkertons will be able to draw on their more than 100 yrs experience in acting as an anti-worker terror group for capitalism.http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-26/wall-street-tracks-wolves-as-may-1-protests-loom.htm

Also a warm welcome to the “Combat Liberalism” blog, which I hasten to add I have nothing to do with. That’s the best idea for an Irish blog I’ve seen in a long time. The Austerity Referendum should provide a practically limitless bounty of material, not to mention Labour’s floundering over abortion rights.

Recession “officially” confirmed in the UK. This is only the second time in UK history, since back in 1975, that the UK has entered into a so-called double-dip recession. North Sea oil dug the UK out of that recession. There is no second bonanza waiting this time around.

‘Unofficially’ a wee chart below confirms that the UK, as measured by GDP, has surpassed the great depression in intensity, duration and with no recovery in sight:

Austerity ideology is accepted by the vast majority of the populace even as the Tories cut their top rate tax by 5%.

The Chancer-lor of Excuses opined that this situation was good and necessary in order to keep interest rates low. While this may sound odd coming from the mouth of a rentier, it is not. They wealthy can now borrow at low interest rates to scoop up depreciating/stagnating priced assets. Their tax cut allows them to sink money into real assets in order to secure equity positions. London real estate seems to be the big prize.

The Tories cut rent allowances which has affected London severly. Councils are now seeking to relocate the poor as far North as possible freeing up housing stock for speculative purposes.

So the housing crisis which precipitated the financial meltdown becomes the foundation for rentiers to create more rentier opportunities in housing.